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You have created some great employee incentive programs and have launched them without a hitch. But  you're unhappy with the results and the engagement level. What happened? What went wrong? Well you probably fell into the most common pitfalls managers do when setting up employee incentive programs---not recognizing promptly. Follow these 3 rules to ensure your employees stay excited to hit their SMART goals.

• Recognize immediately
• Recognize often
• Reward Quickly

Immediate Gratification

Do you watch Netflix? I do and after watching all seasons of Breaking Bad whenever I wanted,  I will never go back to watching 1 episode per week on regular TV again.  Let's face it we want it now.  Same thinking should go into your employee recognition programs.  The best ways to motivate employees are to reinforce positive behavior immediately.  So let take an employee incentive program example:  You have a month long employee sales contest based on dollars sold.  The team with the highest sales will win $500, however over the month, the individual employees can also earn micro recognition awards daily for doing things that contribute to the monthly SMART goal.  These micro awards are a great way to motivate employees and keep them engaged in the larger monthly SMART goal.  Also, remember to make the recgnition public at your weekly sales meetings.

Award More than Once

In the example above you have the longer term monthly goal supported by daily actions such as making at least 25 calls, or increasing your funnel by $1000, or setting at least 3 appointments, or some other daily measurable metric.  The point is, you will not get to your long term goal unless certain tasks are done on a daily basis.  If these tasks get done give a micro award, such as a CrewHu badge, to reinforce that great behavior and do it often.  Soon enough the positive peer pressure will get the whole team executing these daily tasks and you will exceed your monthly goals with ease.  

Reward Quickly

Great!  So now you have a system in place to recognize immediately and often.  However, even the best employee engagement ideas will  be in vein unless you can deliver the rewards quickly.  So now the monthly employee engagement programs ended and the winners want to cash in.  Do not make your employees wait, deliver the rewards immediately.  Using a employee recognition software platform like CrewHu helps make rewarding quick and easy.  Click here to learn more about the CrewHu store.

Conclusion

By following our 3 basic rules you will ensure that your employee recognition programs are Prompt! This will not only excite your team to hit their SMART goals during the launch, but throughout and even after the contest period. Of course this is not the whole enchilada! You must ensure you're contest uses all 4Ps in order to maximize employee engagement and drive revenue. Not sure if your program is hitting the 4Ps? Download our FREE Employee Recognition template below and create an employee engagement program that will be sure to get everyone in the office motivated and happy to work alongside an awesome boss like you!